12/22/2003 @ 12:00AM

Carpet Bombing

War weapons were the inspiration for these rugs. Careful where you step.

Standing in bright sunlight filtered through the dirty windows of a giant self-storage warehouse in Queens, N. Y., Kevin Sudeith unfurls one carpet after another, unleashing a cloud of wool fibers and mothball fumes. He lines them up along the windows, the better to reveal their colorful patterns and bizarre motifs.

At first glance they look like the rugs woven for hundreds of years by the tribal peoples of Afghanistan. But instead of traditional abstract motifs such as water jugs, chickens, blossoms and horses, these rugs depict tanks, paisley-shaped helicopters, jets, hand grenades and Kalashnikov rifles.

Swordsmen on horseback had been the most martial images found on tribal rugs, up until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. But the invasion gave Afghans an abrupt introduction to modern warfare. As Afghan men rose up to fight, women (for nearly all rugs are woven by women) began weaving these new sights into their rugs.

One of the earliest examples in Sudeith’s collection shows mujahedin on horseback throttling to death red-horned devils representing Soviet soldiers. Along the rug’s border runs a procession of Soviet tanks.

A tall, blond Minnesotan with a scraggly patch of fuzz beneath his lower lip, Sudeith, 38, is an artist and rug dealer who started collecting war rugs in 1996 after seeing one hanging in the home of a wealthy Italian jeweler. “I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen,” he says. He saw the rugs as folk art. Wayne Anderson of Birmingham, Ala., who also collects the rugs, likes them for a less highbrow reason: “They make good high school graduation gifts. The images appeal to teenagers accustomed to violent images in videogames.”

To finance his own collection Sudeith became a rug dealer in 1998 and has since sold some 300 war rugs. He currently has some 150 at prices ranging from $400 (for rugs with only a few war motifs) to $7,500 for larger, more complex designs. Sudeith claims war rug prices have doubled since Sept. 11 and quadrupled from 15 years ago. That beats the rest of the carpet market, where auction prices on all but the oldest pieces are at or below levels of two decades ago.

Sudeith’s business is too small to support a showroom, so he ekes out a living selling at flea markets in Manhattan and Brooklyn and over his Web site, www.warrug.com, the best source of war rug images on the Internet.

Nearly all his pieces fall into the Beluch category of tribal rugs, meaning they have short wool pile secured by a wool-and-cotton foundation and average 60 to 100 knots per square inch. Backgrounds tend to be dark, usually blue or red, with brighter colors used as accents. Finer examples use traditional vegetable dyes that have a more subdued palette. Chemical dyes are brighter, even Day-Glo. The wool is minimally processed. As it ages, it oxidizes, increasing sheen and softening colors.

There have been several war rug exhibits since the late 1980s in Italy and Germany, and a show of 17 rugs debuts next February at the Australian National University in Adelaide. While Sudeith expects war rugs to be appreciated someday as important outsider art, that day isn’t now. Most serious collectors prefer more-refined “city carpets,” such as Iranian Ardabil rugs, made of 100% New Zealand worsted wool and boasting 150 to 200 knots per square inch. As for auctions, Christie’s says it has sold one war rug, Sotheby’s none. Specialist Mary Jo Otsea of Sotheby’s says the only way war rugs will make it to auction is if they start fetching higher prices. Sotheby’s won’t auction any rug worth less than $2,000.

Sudeith chalks up this disdain to the fact that most buyers have seen only pitiful little carpets that feature nothing more interesting than a map of Afghanistan and a few hastily woven weapons. Larger, finer pieces are difficult to find. Less than 1% of Afghan rugs have war motifs. If a weaver is going to invest six weeks in making a 4-foot-by-7-foot rug, she usually picks a pattern guaranteed to please an average buyer–somebody who doesn’t want to be intellectually challenged by a floor covering.

New York City rug behemoth ABC Carpet & Home has just 10 war rugs in its inventory of more than 100,000. Only 2 are collectible. The best is a beautiful 4-foot-by-7-footer in muted browns and tans featuring an intricate geometry of lines framing rows of Soviet tanks, their turrets pointing back and skyward–a nonaggressive posture used in the final 1989 withdrawal. Retail price: $1,100.

After Sept. 11 Sudeith was convinced his war rug business was over. But just six months later the entry of U.S. forces into Afghanistan brought a new wave of interest. Sudeith’s problem suddenly became supply.

For nearly two years after the terrorist attacks he couldn’t get any rugs at all from Afghanistan. After trade resumed, he found a whole new genre of war rugs had arisen. On woolen fields where Soviet weapons used to appear now stood U.S. armaments. A $400 rug shows an F-16, an Abrams tank and the slogan “Heat to War.” Others, clearly made for sale to Americans, proclaim death to terrorists and “Long live U.S. soldiers.”

The most disturbing pieces commemorate the World Trade Center attack. One has planes labeled American and United crashing into the towers, but also features a white dove carrying an olive sprig in is beak ($600). When Ronald O’Callaghan, another dealer, first saw a WTC attack rug, he says, “I told my suppliers I never wanted to see another one of those again.” (He’s since changed his mind and is selling them.)

Most dealers buy rugs by the bale, but Sudeith has a more intimate operation. Three of his current buyers are U.S. Special Forces operatives on the ground in Afghanistan. Sudeith pays one man double his costs, sending checks to his stateside wife. Another consigns rugs, getting paid when they’re sold. The third receives costs plus a cut of profits. There are also a half-dozen native suppliers.

Before Sept. 11 it was easy for Sudeith to transfer money to his contacts using the anonymous, centuries-old Middle Eastern banking system known as hawala. In a dingy Manhattan office he would give cash and his contact’s account number to a teller, who would make a few notations on a slip of paper. A few days later Sudeith’s supplier would call to thank him for the payment. Now many hawala offices have moved and no longer accept cash. Those that remain require transactions be made by certified check or money order.

At the apex of his collection is an enormous 6-foot-by-12-foot rug with tight knots and beautiful colors that depicts a menagerie of animals–lions, chickens, deer–along with assorted weaponry and vehicles. The centerpiece of the rug is a square pond with a duck swimming in it. Beside the duck is a Stinger antiaircraft missile. Stingers, though rare in rugs, are historically significant. Provided to mujahedin by the U.S., they enabled the Afghans to shoot down Soviet aircraft. Sudeith says he won’t part with it for less than $20,000.